More Times to Come
by Cloud Awning
Summary: It's Woody's birthday, and he can't help but remember another child of his past. Angst/Hurt/Comfort/Friendship, one-shot. Takes place just after the events of Toy Story 1.  Rated K-Plus  for slightly dark themes, just being safe.


Title: More Times To Come  
>Genre: HurtComfort/Friendship/Angst  
>Rating: K+ for dark themes<p>

Hey, I hope you enjoy my first Toy Story fanfiction. It's a little bit angsty but I wrote it after watching Toy Story 3. I know by now the stories about Woody's past are a little bit cliche, but I didn't know it was a bandwagon until I jumped on it!  
>Some parts are a little rough but I hope you get the points I was trying to make.<p>

It was Woody's birthday. Andy's room was positively teeming with a ridiculous amount of excitement. After all, the toys never had a chance to pull a surprise party! And who better to throw it for than the celeberated Sheriff himself?

Woody pushed his hat back and scratched his head in amusement. He'd asked them not to make a big deal, but he was overruled by majority voting. A party they wanted, and a party they would have, whether the birthday toy liked it or not!

So Woody sat high on a dusty shelf and pretended like he didn't know what all the fuss was about while everybody debated in whispers how to put what decorations where, and was a cake really necessary since toys really don't eat, and could Rex wrap this and that present even though his arms were short?

Woody couldn't help but be just a little bit reflective right now. While the sun glimmered in and covered the shiny wooden floor with blind-shaped shadows and toys clicked back and forth, and Andy's mom moved around downstairs doing the dishes, he remembered, like a weird soft voice, that moment in 1955 when he met his first child.

He'd belonged to Andy's father first. New in the box, straight from the nearest toy store, he was unwrapped on Christmas day as a present to an invalid boy who couldn't walk anymore but whose imagination ran more rampant than his legs ever would.

Woody smiled sadly remembering this. John Davis couldn't run around like any normal eight-year-old boy and sometimes he was very miserable about it. That Christmas was the happiest of his childhood, he'd said so many times. Not to Woody exactly, but the cowboy doll knew all the same. There was something that happened between a child and his toy, something that didn't require speech. A toy just knew how his owner felt, deep inside him.

The Sheriff sometimes thought that a toy came alive not just because of an owner, but because the toy's heart became too big for it's body.

Woody remembered how John would sit in bed all day, legs so skinny they couldn't support him, but his upper body was strong and he was a quick thinker and a fantastic artist.

Andy looked just like him, too. Woody thought about that. Human things often went way over his head. He was just a tiny speck in a person's life.  
>But for these short years, the magic ones between childhood and adulthood, he was made for them. Made to channel them, made to help them live on.<p>

John had big thick glasses and a short little nose perched under them. He had a big grin and a heart like glass. This never changed as he got older. Woody was there through it all to watch it happen.

At first, Woody was the star of all the drawings and the pictures. SNAP! the camera would go, the lightbulb flashing; John would sit there in his pajamas pretending to do his schoolwork but really he was playing. Then the crayons would fly over the notebook page, with John hunched over it and Woody sitting in his spot where the child had carefully placed him. (It wasn't that easy to make him stand up since his legs were entirely cotton and jean cloth but Woody cheated just a little bit to help John along).

Then the magic would happen and John would grab Woody from his spot and show him the pictures.

"This is you, Woody!" he said, whispering so his mom wouldn't hear him not doing his math, "I drew you saving Jezabel from the evil Dr. Muchnik, who went back in time to..."

The stories went on and on, and then one day they stopped. John stopped playing so much and began to read just a little bit more. Often, Woody would be placed on the shelf next to the bed.

But for the times when John was sicker than he should be, John's mother always made sure to place Woody beside his head on the pillow.

"To stop the nightmares," she told the doll, smiling as she placed his hat on his head.

Woody would have hugged her for that. He had to settle for his usual plastic expression though.

He saw she was smiling but tears were in her eyes. Her son was near death. This Woody also knew. But while the nightmares took away John's innocence, he was there for it all. It was his job.

While John muttered in a feverish sleep and the doctor made night house calls, Woody heard the adults murmering seriously behind closed doors and knew the day was coming that John might Die.

What does that mean, he thought, shivering. It doesn't sound right and I don't like it if it takes John away. He was a naive toy, just born and didn't know the human way yet. He knew there were children, who loved their toys, he knew there were parents who loved their children. That children grew up, he was aware of that concept. But that children died... it was foreign to him.

He was terrified of that unknown day. When John rolled over in his sleep, Woody reached out one trembling little plastic hand and touched his face.

"Don't go," he whispered.

That morning John woke up, placed his glasses on his face, ate a good breakfast and did his schoolwork. There were no more relapses the rest of that year, or the year after that, or the year after that.

During this time Woody mostly remembered sleeping. When a toy isn't played with for a certain amount of time he gets groggy and slow. The years rolled by in a blurr and the cowboy doll perched on a shelf and got dusty. Then there was more dust. And more years. Then finally, darkness.

He woke up in a box, but he didn't know that at first. He heard noises and shouting, and happy music, a child laughing, but there was still that darkness and he was very confused.

Then the box was joggled quite suddenly and a glaring light cut over his face. He resisted the urge to blink, and a child's hand reached in and took him out.

"Wow! A cowboy!"

"Not just any cowboy," a familiar voice laughed. Familiar, but not the same. Older.

"He's Woody! The rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild wild west! Oh we had the best of times, he and I."

Woody wanted to cry.

There was John, an adult now with a child of his own who currently clutched Woody in his hand. A then five-year-old Andy Davis.

John sat there in a wheelchair, skinny legs and big thick glasses and a face that had aged and stretched to only slightly resemble that of his younger self. But he was still kind and loving and his heart of glass was only the more visible.

He held out his hand to his son, who handed Woody to him and John put him close to his face, smiling his patient smile as he pulled the big white chain on Woody's back.

Suddenly Woody blurted, "There's a SNAKE in my boot!"

The whole room laughed and he was handed back to Andy, who giggled and hugged Woody close.

"You take good care of him," John said softly. Woody took that to heart even though that comment was probably meant for Andy to hear.

I'll take good care of him John, I promise, Woody thought. Then everything became a blurr again as Andy twirled around holding the cowboy's hands, and he caught the room in jagged detail. The Christmas tree, the lamp in a corner, Andy's mother sitting on the couch by her husband, the Christmas tree again...

Then Andy stopped and fell backwards in a breathless sort of pile onto a recliner and giggled a little more.

Woody beamed with happiness when Andy inscribed his name on the cowboy's left boot with a black crayon. Suddenly he had a place in someone's heart again!

Thus began another long, happy friendship between toy and child.

But two years after that John had another of those long-avoided relapses. He passed away four months before Andy's seventh birthday and wasn't there to witness the birth of his daughter, Molly.

When Andy played, he was happy. But at night, the cowboy was the only one to hear him cry. It hurt him badly to hear that sound, worse than when John was sick and muttering through nightmares. This was a child missing his father. That was a pain beyond anything a toy could fix.

The cowboy doll reached out one steady, plastic hand to touch Andy's face as he cried in his sleep.

"I miss him, too," Woody whispered.

The next year and a half flew by with another whirl of activity. Andy got just a little taller. Woody met knew toys and said goodbye to some old friends. The bedroom was the only world they knew, and they governed it only as toys would.

Then along came Bo Peep. The Davis's got her from a friend who was giving away collectibles, and Andy's mom placed her on his bed one day while he was at school.

Woody quickly fell in love with her white china face, her blue eyes, her soft smile. He thought it was a wonder she never broke through all the times Andy had Woody save her from Evil Dr. Pork Chop, she was so delicate looking.

Sometimes when Andy's back was turned during play Woody winked at her and she would give him that cheeky smile only she knew how to do.

Later, she would grab him around the neck with her crook for teasing her like that, but he didn't mind. It was a game they played. (He blushed like a madman when she covered him in kisses, though.)

Several more months went by like this and when Woody suddenly realized exactly how old he was, it hit him in a strange place.

He knew when human people got older, their hair turned white and their faces got wrinkles.

All in all, I look pretty good for a guy of fifty, he mused to himself on top of the shelf. Except for maybe a few minute stains here and there. His cheeks were not so pink, his brown eyes not so glossy, the colors on the fabrics of his clothes not so vibrant. There was a spot on his head where the brown hair had scuffed away just a tiny bit and Andy had repaired this as well as he could with a brown marker.

But the years had been good.

So when Woody watched the activity of his best friends down below him, he didn't feel old. He felt loved and needed.

"Happy birthday!" They all beamed, showing him the room with it's paper-taped decorations and cheesily drawn cows.

Hamm made a speech, Etch-A-Sketch drew him a portrait and Bo kissed him full on the lips. RC whirred happily, Buzz clapped him on the back, and Rex gave him one of his most impressive roars. Slinky Dog composed a song which Mr. Potato Head refused to sing but recited instead.

When it was all done and the paper cowboy-themed cake was disposed of and it got very quiet, Woody smiled.

"Thank you all so much," he said to the room, and they understood how much he meant it, and more.

It had been fifty years of heartache and happiness, dust, and the fleeting scurry of childhood times. Woody carried it all with him in a heart that was bigger than his body.

And there were even more times to come.


End file.
